B(if)tek: Big in Hungary?

Happy Chinese New Year!

On 23 January, the world ascends into the mystical Year of the Dragon. According to a Chinese astrology site I selected after throwing digital yarrow stalks into the air several times:

“A dragon is a legendary creature. All legendary stories about Chinese dragons are from the sky, which means heaven in China. The image of dragon is blurred, misty, mystic, occulted, noble and untouchable. For China, it is the symbol of power from heaven.”

You might be thinking. “Gosh, that sounds like Nicole!” And you’d be right! The Dragon is my Chinese astrology sign – so 2012 is going to be my year of supernatural wonders!

A mystical Year of One’s Own must of course start with a sign from Heaven (which in my case is my hometown). And you bet, a few days ago I got the following email from dear old pal Gordon who has recently moved to Budapest to work for HBO:

“So, I’m up most mornings at present at about 5am with horrible jetlag, and I think to myself, why don’t I get some new music from iTunes to start the year?

And then I’m checking out the iTunes electronic section and scrolling down the top selling albums and erm, hello? Rocking in at number 4 in new year 2012 with a bullet on the iTunes Store Hungary/Central Europe is ummm, the 1996 debut from Australia’s most awesome electronic grrrl duo, B(if)tek. 

And I have proof (attached!).

And if you look closely to the right at the screenshot above, you will see the prehistoric first release Kate Crawford and myself put out has indeed elbowed contemporary glitteratti out of the way (including a Norah Jones remix) to number 4 on the charts. In Hungary!

A miracle indeed for which I have no explanation whatsoever. So if anyone can shed light on how B(if)tek suddenly got big in Budapest, I would very much like to know. Any other sightings of B(if)tek, or any of my other old wobbly electronic projects, on the playlists of former Eastern Bloc music websites would also be gratefully received.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before everyone started getting nostalgic about mid to late‘90s electronica, a golden era of sonic originality, and maybe the last. And once contemporary artists recycle those sounds (and there must be a Mouse on Mars cover band out there somewhere), whats left to pillage?

For quite a few years now, I’ve been boring my friends by complaining that contemporary rock music’s endless recycling of previous sounds and looks will mean that, in the 2010s, new bands will simply run out of original sounds or looks to regurgitate. We won’t be listening to post-consumer recycled material anymore – we’ll be listening to the cultural equivalent of a needle that has reached the end of side two and is just skipping over and over again in that last groove.

But last year, someone articulated these concerns and arguments way better than I ever could in my beery finger jabbing moments. Simon Reynolds’ meticulously researched and heart-felt book Retromania: Pop Cultures Addiction to Its Own Past says it all. Simon eloquently states The Problem:

“What seems to have happened is that the place that The Future once occupied in the imagination of young music-makers has been displaced by The Past: that’s where the romance now lies, with the idea of things that have been lost. The accent, today, is not on discovery but on recovery. All through the noughties, the game of hip involved competing to find fresher things to remake: it was about being differently derivative, original in your unoriginality.”

Yeah! But Simon is far too intelligent to just hand-wring at this apparent cultural cul-de-sac, rather he reminds us of the fact that rock/ pop music is no longer young, although we keep wanting it to be. What we all indulge in now is a middle-aged artform, maybe even one in its dotage. It can never be the mind blowing, culture changing, explosion of aesthetic, sexual and spiritual awakening it once represented in the 50s and 60s when it burst onto stages and stereograms pretty much ex-nihilo.

And as I read Paul Drummond’s marvelous and utterly riveting history of Roky Erickson and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, I am deeply moved by the extraordinary birth pains this genre of music had to endure in the States. The band’s LSD fueled sense of a spiritual and cultural Mission led to an early massive youth following but also personal hardships, poverty and finally life disintegration. The Elevators‘ sounds, looks and lifestyles were recognised as a threat to traditional social norms, and band members were subject to the very real oppression and persecution of the Texan state, winding up in jail. Zap forward 40 years, and fellow Texans The Polyphonic Spree are not going to end up behind bars or subjected to electroshock therapy anytime soon, no matter how long their hair or how many spleefs they toke. The times have a-changed, mom and pop and the kids and even PC Plod can now all agree its easy listening cable TV music for the designer dreadlock masses.

I have in my wallet a ticket to see Roky Erickson play at Melbourne’s iconic Corner Hotel venue in March. I will keep the ticket stub, like my New York Dolls 2010 Pittsburgh show stub, in a little shrine in my studio, as a remembrance of psyche-garage past.

Flamingo Estate

Just before Christmas, I moved into my very first Home of my Own. A villa in the ‘70s era seaside working class Western Melbourne suburb of Altona Meadows (or ‘Stoner Meadows’ as my pal Byron from Electric Dreams studios likes to call it). If I had decided to purchase a house, say, when I was in utero, I might have been able to afford to buy in my old gigging and lounging grounds of inner Melbourne – the now super-chic streets of Fitzroy, Collingwood or Brunswick.

Unfortunately those pavements are now groaning under the weight of hydraulically-supported- designer-teak-finish baby carriages, as the new gen Baby Boomers with their pinched waist frocks and tattooed ankles have moved in en masse, with cash generated from God knows where. When I lived in a warehouse on top of a shop in Smith Street in those late 90s halcyon days, I used to scuff discarded fixes out of my doorstep as I stepped out in the mornings. Now, the most common obstacle you are likely to encounter in a hung-over stagger down inner Melbourne cafe precincts on Saturday morning is a trimmed beard New Dad sipping a machiatto and proudly bouncing offspring on his knee.

But I’m not complaining. I, too, have a family of my own – my vintage synths, 80s drum machines, Tibetan instruments, and the most recent addition, an utterly gorgeous 1972 Wurlizter electronic piano I had shipped back all the way from Brownsville, PA. They needed a home of their own too, and soon they will have one. I’m in the process of converting my lock-up garage into a music studio.

Yes, that means Dimples – my hail damaged 2002 Hyundai hatchback – will never have a roof over her pock marked head. But thats ok. Street life never harmed Chuck, the 2003 Hyundai hatchback I owned in Pittsburgh. He spent a good part of his life buried under two feet of snow outside my apartment in the still crime troubled streets of Lawrenceville. But that did not stop his stellar rise to fame in the drive-by and parking scenes he starred in as an extra in the Hollywood features shot in Pittsburgh over two summers.

I read recently that Melbourne’s long-standing obsession with all things ‘vintage’ has now won it international recognition as a retro-tourism mecca. I have taken advantage of this to kit my new bachelorette pad out in a fashion will be the envy of swingers around the world. My living room positively throbs with alt.glamor, including a ‘70s padded corner cocktail bar, handsomely framed by a frayed wallpaper sunset, and a late ‘60s stereogram that sounds every bit as good as it looks:

My mother spent her last years in a second story flat in a‘60s block of apartments in Northgate, a once outer but now middle ring suburb of Brisbane. The flats were constructed in that utterly featureless ‘brick toilet block’ aesthetic so beloved at the time by Soviet planners and Australian suburban builders alike. But Mum treasured her little bit of personal space; and across the street-facing side of the building, the developers had hammered – I think without any trace of irony – a swirly white iron sign: Camelot.

So, having found myself back in the outer suburbs, not something I would have suspected a decade ago, I decided to honor Mum by naming my own belated grab at the great Australian Suburban Dream: Flamingo Estate.

And thanks to Aaron and Lisa, there are two bona-fide plastic pink flamingos in the backyard:

And thanks to Bernie and Robert, there are now three, beaded African ‘fair trade’ flamingos nesting happily by the frond lamp on my dining table:

But all this flamingo dreaming is not just for my own enjoyment. Once renovations are complete, hopefully by mid February, I’ll be turning over Flamingo Estate to a series of cocktail party fundraising nights for the usual suspects of environmental and human rights causes that I like to support. First up, a screening of The Last Mountain, a film about the devastating impact of mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia and beyond. Money raised will be donated Appalachian Voices. Keep tuned for more info and invites.

So, a sincere happy Year of the Dragon to regular site visitors, and any puzzled Europeans who have landed on this blog by mistake because they were looking for a receipe for biftek (which means ‘beefsteak’ in French) or the latest happening sounds in former Communist colony bleep.

Oh, and yes. I almost forgot. 2012 is going to be the end of the world, according to the Mayan calendar and millions of cosmic conspiracy theory websites. But for those of us benefiting from the ‘90s electronic/ dance revival, what better excuse do we need to party like its 1999?:-)

I had this fantasy as I dozed off last night:

Episode title: Gas bagging

Scene: The Emergency Department of All Saints Hospital, New York (fictional setting of Nurse Jackie). The usual crew are hanging around the nurses station.

Zoey (mustering courage): Umm. Jackie? How come we’re a major metropolitan hospital and umm….there’s only like…you know…like..there’s only the same two doctors working here…every episode?

Jackie: (exasperated). Jesus Zoey! (gestures towards crowded waiting room)There are people are out there – people with no private health insurance – watching re-runs of Married with Children right now, and you’re asking me a question like that?

Zoey: Sorry Jackie, I was just…

(Zoey is cut off by commotion as paramedics rush in dramatically with man on stretcher, drips etc)

Mo Mo: (shouts!) Hey, can we get some help here? This man fell down a credit sequence!

Jackie: Oh crap! (digs into pocket, pops an Oxy)

Jackie, Zoey, Mo Mo, and Thor gather around semi-conscious man and perform urgent looking stabilising procedures.

Jackie (leaning over man, reassuringly): Its OK honey, you’re gonna be alright, ok?

(quietly to Mo Mo). How far down the credit sequence? Was it from unit production manager to assistant unit production manager, or worse?

Mo Mo: No, no. I mean he literally fell down a title sequence, from a high rise window, past a whole bunch of ’50s advertisements.

Jackie: (Shouts) Where’s the doctor? Can we get a doctor in here please? (briefly turns away and puffs something up her nose)

Zoey: (mutters).. and they’re never in surgery…

Dr Cooper brushes in: Never fear, Coop is here. Ha ha!

(Man on stretcher stirs). Where am I? I need a bourbon.

Jackie: You’re in hospital sweetie, you’re gonna be alright. What’s your name?

Draper: Dick Whitman. (looking terrified) NO! I’m not Dick Whitman. No WAY am I Dick Whitman. Ha, ha, ha – what a thing to say? Why would I be Dick Whitman? I don’t know why I said that.

The crew stare at Draper expectantly.

Jackie surreptitiously injects something into her buttocks.

Draper: I don’t even know who Dick Whitman is.

Thor: Weeelll, then – who are you?

Draper: (wide-eyed). I’m….I’m…. Crockodile Dundee.

Zoey: (squeals and claps) Wowee!

Dr Cooper: (shakes his head). No way! Now, I recognise you. You’re the genius that did the ad campaign for All Saints, the one featuring me. You’re the legendary Donald Draper the adman! Or should I say madman, eh? (winks ingratiatingly at Draper).

Draper: (coughs) Yes, of course, I’m Donald Draper, but you can call me Mr Draper. I was just having a bit of fun there, thinking out loud about our next big campaign- to promote coal seam gas mining interests in Australia.

Mo Mo and Thor exchange glances mouthing ‘Where’s Australia?’

Draper: (Looking around). Hey doesn’t anyone here find me irresistibly attractive? I haven’t had sex for at least three hours I think.

Thor: I do!

Zoey (suggestively). Let me take your catheter out Mr Draper, sounds like you won’t be needing it for a while.

Dr Cooper: (sucking up). Hey Don! I think I’ve heard of that coal seam gas mining stuff.

(Lights dim in the emergency cubicle, close up of Dr Cooper as he looks off camera in a dreamy daze)

“You know, just the other day I was having a beer at the local lesbian bar with my Mommy number two, when said to me: ‘Son, fracking, involves a poorly regulated process of injecting millions of gallons of water, sand, and hundreds of chemicals, many of them toxic, into the earth at high pressures to break up rock formations and release natural gas trapped inside. There have been a wave of groundwater-contamination incidents and mysterious health problems out West, in Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, where hydraulic fracturing has been going on for years as part of a massive oil-and-gas boom. Thousands of reports of aquifer/ watershed contamination, locals made sick from drinking water, even gas coming out of home taps, has not stopped the ‘gas rush’ East and now even my cute ole Pennsylvanian hometown of Dimmock has become a stinking worthless sludgeheap.’

And then she kind of teared up and took a handkerchief from her Gucci handbag and blew her nose, and I said “Yetch, Mom! Use tissues, they’re much more hygienic!” and she snapped “Shut up, Coop!” and continued:

“Coal seam gas (CSG) extraction and the gas that comes from shales (through fracking) are chemically very similar. They generate the same amount of heat and CO₂ when burned in your heater or at an electricity power plant. Probably about half of coal seam gas reserves discovered in Australia will require fracking.

The Australia Federal government has already approved 4,000 CSG wells in Queensland, many of them sitting right on prime agricultural land, with 40,000 planned across Australia in the next 20 years. The risks to Australia’s ground water are enormous – this in the driest country on earth! And many of the wells will be sunk in prime agricultural land, when only 1-2% of Australian soil is arable!

“And you know what the darndest thing is? Australian farmers can’t even refuse mining companies the right to undertake coal seam gas mining on their land! Does that woman look like Ellen to you?”

Cubicle lights up again.

Draper: (with admiration and grudging respect). You’re a man, Coop. I’ll give you that. I didn’t know you had it in you. But well, I guess I just have to admit I was wrong about you. You do have a penis.

Jackie scowls at Cooper, makes the drooping weenie sign with her little finger, Coop smirks.

Jackie: Doctors always get the damn credit.

Cooper: But you didn’t say anything!

Jackie: I don’t have to, asshole, I’m a nurse. I’m busy healing, right? while you’re busy gas bagging.

Everybody laughs.

Draper sits up, lights a cigarette. Jackie pulls out a joint and lights it.

Cooper (more agitated): No, you’re not, you’re just getting stoned off your tits! (suddenly bites his lip, and twitches)

Draper: And when they dredge 46 million cubic meters of the World Heritage Listed Great Barrier reef to build coal seam gas export facilities, Australians can feel proud of the progress they have made as a nation, just like those Appalachian hillbillies feel proud when they see the tops of their heritage mountains blown up for coal.

Thats why I’ve called this campaign “Coal Seam Gas Mining? Its A Crock!“* Featuring Paul Hogan barbecuing a whole crocodile on a giant gas powered BBQ!

Whistles of admiration from the crew.

Suddenly a stunning redheaded woman with rocket sized breasts runs into the cubicle:

Joan: Oh, Mr Draper! There you are! We all thought you’d just nicked out to seduce the nodding bird sales team. Mr Sterling needs to see you urgently!

Jackie suddenly passes out head first into Draper‘s crotch.

Cooper screams, stares at Joan‘s breasts. Camera cut to slow motion as his arms start to come up and we all know what’s going to happen next.

Fade out.

Next week on If Nurse Jackie met Madmen:

Draper unexpectedly loses the Australian coal seam gas account and takes revenge by producing viral protest videos for Get-Up and The Greens. Both of Cooper‘s mothers take a sentimental journey to Pennsylvania and organise a ‘lesbians against Marcellus Shale’ action group and video collective. And after having an affair with her for a year, Eddie suddenly realises he’s never been to Jackie‘s place or ever asked her any personal questions. D’oh!

*’It’s a crock’ is an Australian colloquialism, short for ‘Its a crock of shit.’

The Band of Discovery’s first live gig

While Wall St protesters make history in their brave defiance of corruption, soaring income inequalities, poverty and grotesque perversion of democratic process in the corporate fiefdom that is present-day America, two Australian women were quietly making their own statement against turning 40 in the suburbs of Melbourne. It was Foley’s 40th birthday party shindig, and folks had gathered from far and wide around Melbourne to gather in Foley’s little Thornbury apartment and hear rousing middle aged protest songs by Skeltys and Foley and The Band of Discovery.

So much to complain about, so little time.

We started the set with a recap of the hits born of our now legendary journey through the Appalachians in October last year. “Hightailin’ It” – a bittersweet homage to the “wilderness made mall’’ experience of Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain playground, and “Shrimpzilla” – the original fast food gospel track that brings a tear and a tummy grumble to everyone of religious sentiment. Click below to have a listen to this great southern fried snack:

Shrimpzilla

While we paused for Evan to retune his banjo and for a hyper-excited Blind Dog Nico to whump her head against the dining table legs for the hundredth time, I manipulated my breast to adjust the egg shaker that I had secreted down my bra for a surprise entry later in the set, and surveyed the crowd. Lucy’s friends and family sat in chairs and crouched on the polished dining room floor, beers in one hand, vegan sesame balls in the other, staring at us, waiting innocently for ‘more’. Rowdier types hung out in the kitchen, including my lovely Japanese former flatmate, Hiroko, who was the one friend out of about a dozen of my invitees who turned up, a higher ratio than normal.

The break also afforded me the opportunity to grab the black pantyhose I had slung around my neck, and re-tie the legs onto my washboard handles – my ‘strap’ had unwound during the excited scrapings of the first two songs. I glanced back at John leaning laconically against his double bass in the corner, and frizzy haired Jenny, tuning up her spoons. I noted with satisfaction that we were a handsome band, particularly Foley and I who were dressed in dark blue spinster polker dot dresses with pinched waists, set off by little red scarves. Foley assured me that “all the youngsters” were into dowdy dresses with pinched waists nowadays, dowdy was “in”. I, of course, had no idea about such things, but deferred as always to Foley’s superior sense of what was really “now”.

Then we started in on the old time country complainin’ in earnest. Patsy Cline’s “Walking the Dog”, which many bands including the Rolling Stones have covered, trying to make out that the lyrics are some kind of saucy metaphor for sleeping around, when in fact, its obviously just a simple complaint song about dogs. Then Tammy Wynette “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad”, which featured my egg shaker solo. With lines like “I’ve never seen the inside of a bar room”, and Tammy singing this with her 21 year old daughter, you can get a sense of just how much women in the ‘60s had to complain about compared to now.

But it was only when we launched into more Band of Discovery originals, that we could truly give voice to the gripes that face gals in their 40s today.

“Old Enough to Be Your Mother”, a ‘pull no punches’ ballad about the inevitable heartaches of the Cougar/ Cub relationship – left not a dry eye in the house. And “Skunkline” – a complaint song about having to vanquish “the big ole streak of grey, where there used to red” with hair dye every six weeks, got folks to their feet with its heart wrenching honesty and bluegrass mania.

The night wound down from this high point with some more Carter family songs, including a never to be forgotten rendition of “Ring of Fire” featuring a solo by my good self on the traditional mountain instrument, the Casio. The whole audience joined in on the chorus, and I caught Foley’s eye as she passionately strummed her Maton and we sang together into the retro birdcage mic. “What better way to mark the transition from our vibrant youth” our warm glances seemed to say, “to female middle age, than a sing-a-long about an extra-marital affair that was a monster hit in the ‘60s?” We nodded, then that was it, and we made our gracious bows, to shouts of “Encore!” etc

Nico woofed hysterically under the table, her white eyes staring at nothing in particular.

So what will the Band of Discovery discover next?

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is one of the top five comedy festivals in the world. Its a fact that Foley and I are now suffering from ‘post-40th birthday party’ ennui. Surely any cost-benefit analysis would show that ‘Comedy Festival entry fee plus five pissed audience members for hipster Northcote micro-venue show, is equal to, or greater than, ten psycho-therapy sessions plus five scripts of Effexor?’ I think we are all on the same page here.

So look out, BoD may well show up on the Comedy Festival program for April next year.

Meanwhile, if anyone can’t wait, and simply MUST see the ‘road trip that spawned the fast food gospel that spawned the film that spawned the album covers that spawned The Band of Discovery then email me, and I will gladly send you a link to “Skeltys and Foley: The Journey of the Band of Discovery” for your very own private viewing.

May the Shrimp be with you!

The Wind in the Suburbs

In Thornbury, an inner suburb of Melbourne which is more suburb than inner, there is a little two bedroom flat, and in that flat, there dwell two women and two dogs. Its winter in Australia, a place the rest of the world chuckles at because its upside down, but the inhabitants don’t mind because they see the world sunny-side up. As illustrated by this genuine non-photoshopped egg:

Although every evening the Melbourne winds chivy the scraggly eucalypts who then tap their branches against the windows to get in, the two women and their two dogs are snug and safe inside their little flat, warmed by the glow of Are You Being Served? repeats on the tele.

The two women are called Skeltys and Foley. That is, they have a name each, they don’t share those names. Even though they are the best of friends and share everything else, including their tampon supply. The ancient kelpie will lift her head and knock it against the dining room table if you call out ‘Hey – Blind Dog Nico!’, and the dashing daschund lying in Skeltys lap will start whimpering and bumping against her thighs if she whispers ‘Hey – Lover Boy Dac!’ a bit too suggestively.

During these shivery days, when the sunlight hours are so short you can see right up their skirts, Skeltys and Foley like nothing better than to snuggle in their ‘70s armchairs and talk about their canine chums.

“Do you think the Prozac is helping Dac?” Skeltys would sometimes ask. Dac was seeing a pooch therapist who had prescribed the famous anti-depressant to help calm Dac’s delicate nerves and illusions of grandeur. Although the handsome sausage dog was no bigger than a chorizo, it liked nothing better on walks than to hurl itself at Rottweilers, cyclists and babies in prams.

“I don’t know, maybe he is a little calmer”, Foley would reply. And then they’d both look at Dac who was lying on the couch, his big, black eyes coated in a doleful glaze, staring at nothing in particular.

“Its lucky his good looks make up his personality disorder” Skeltys would venture. And on that point, the two chums would both heartily agree, and then launch into a discussion about the various winter fashion accessories they planned to purchase for the dashing daschund, including a tartan cape, a fob watch and very small top hat.

A loud BONK sounded behind them and made everyone start. But it was only Nico on her way out of the kitchen who had mistaken the fridge for the doorway as she often did.

One night, Foley picked up the remote control and snapped off the television, declaring “If we watch another cooking show on SBS, Skeltys, I’m going to be sick!”. She turned to her diminutive friend (for Skeltys was not much bigger than a chorizo herself) and cried” “Tell me again about your latest American adventures, please do! I’m in the mood to hear about far away places and exotic peoples.”

“Righteo!” And Skeltys puffed up, because she liked nothing better than to boast about her USA travels, which made her feel quite the adventuress, although sometimes she’d have to spend a fair bit of time patting on the storytelling icing, because there wasn’t quite enough cake. But she loved to whip up an exciting yarn, and here is the grand story she told.

The Further Adventures of Skeltys

“As you know Foley, I had been in Melbourne three months from February, toiling away on a short term contract in a blacking factory just to get enough money to put bread on the table and get my fare back to the USA, and escape this dashed penal colony once again.”

Foley interrupted at this point “But I thought you were working in a public service office job?”

Skeltys scowled. “Well, it felt like a blacking factory, you know the lighting is awfully dim in those cubicles. Please don’t interrupt, Foley, or I’ll lose my train of thought.”

Foley apologized and Skeltys continued.

“At the beginning of June, my pockets were again brimful of crowns and shillings. Which turned out to be a bit of a bother when I got to LA, because Americans had moved to a decimal currency quite a long time ago, I had quite forgotten that. But nevertheless, the exchange rate was very much in my favor, and I spent two glorious days living the high life with my glamorous DJ friends, Dougee and Brady, and their superstar cat Grovey, who has his own website and a much bigger following than my last band The Jilted Brides. We had a free lunch at Santa Monica Google, and then we relaxed at the beach and drank margaritas bigger than our heads!

“The next day, I visited the last remaining rodeo tailor store on Lankershim Boulevard, Hollywood. In the ‘60s, the most famous tailor for American music stars was Nudie Cohn, who made fabulous rhinestone cowboy suits for everybody from Elvis, to Gram Parsons to Dolly Parton. Now that Nudie has passed away, his custom rodeo tailoring legacy is being carried on by Jaime Castaneda whose more recent clients include Dwight Yokum and Chris Isaak.

“I hope you didn’t run into Chris at the store?” Foley enquired anxiously, as she knew Skeltys was sensitive about the international heartthrob’s non-offer of marriage, despite her being perfectly willing to consider a proposal for quite some time now.

Skeltys sniffed bravely. “It was a risk I was prepared to take. But no, luckily he wasn’t picking out a diamante studded bolero jacket with his name on it that particular day.”

“Anyway, I got a fitting for my very own Nudie-style suit! Its going to have my own special design on it, and it should be ready in a few weeks time, hopefully in time for your big 40th birthday shindig, Foley. What a grand affair that will be!”

And the two best friends felt little butterflies of excitement flap around their hearts as they thought about their upcoming performance at Foley’s party, and how all their friends would be there, and how everyone would surely love their songs, although at the moment, they only had two.

“And the next day I flew to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where I stayed with my buddy Jeff who owns ranches and everything, and I drove around the nearby national parks and saw lots and lots of buffalo, and moose and horses and awfully big mountains.

One night I ate an elk burger at the Million Dollar Cowboy bar, a country and western venue with saddles for seats at the bar!”

“Did you mount one?” asked Foley

“A millionaire cowboy?”

“No, no, the saddles at the bar!”

“I certainly did! And give me a ground up member of the deer species inside a bun any day over any of our own wildlife served up in a similar fashion. Mighty tasty! Oh, the Americans know their burgers.

“After a few days, I had my fill of glacier fed rivers rushing through monumental Western scenery, 19th century towns with faded wooden boardwalks and slow glances in saloons from men wearing stetsons. I dashed off to New York to do a gig with our very dear old pal Ormsby. Oh, if only you had been there Foley, it would have been just like old times!”

Many years ago, Skeltys, Foley and Ormsby had all lived in Canberra, Australia’s creepiest town and the nation’s capital, and they had been in an indie cross-over band together called Area 51.

“At this really cool basement venue in Tribeca, I told stories, and showed some of my music travel videos, including our film – Skeltys and Foley: The Journey of the Band of Discovery. It was a hit!”

Although she had heard Skeltys breathlessly narrate this part of the story several times before, Foley just had to ask again, grinning:

“How much of a hit?”

“The audience was wheezing with laughter! And they loved our two tunes! You know, we are onto something with this fast food gospel, Foley. Bigger times ahead! Maybe the big screen! Anyway, then Ormsby and I sang some songs, and then before I knew it, it was the next morning and I was slumped against the window of a Pittsburgh bound Megabus, feeling the bourbon from the night before slosh back and forth inside my skull, creating a most disagreeable sensation”

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“When I got home to Pittsburgh, the Band of Discovery film screened twice, again to many guffaws and hurrahs! Then it was time for me to start the whole damnable process of packing up and selling my belongings again, just like I did in Australia three years ago.”

Then Skeltys was quiet for a bit and let out a big sigh and gave Dac’s nose a slow stroke because this was the sad part of the story. Sad it was to leave Pittsburgh, the jolliest of former rust belt towns, with its picturesque, higgledy piggledy hills and zig zaggy, potholed roads. Sad to leave former band mate and adventuress Tanya, a Jilted Bride no more, now cosied up in a wee Lawrenceville apartment with her sweetheart poet Scotty. Sad to leave gorgeous, mystical Allegheny cemetery, with its rolling hills, civil war monuments, grave digging groundhogs and memories of lost love.

So sad to leave dear pals John and Al and Adrienne and Jackie, and lovely urban farmer neighbors Timmy and Jimmy. Sad to leave Squonk Opera just as they made the Hollywood quarter finals of America’s Got Talent and forced millions of Americans to put their burgers back on their plates and stare at their TV screens in awe.

But Skeltys would spend more shillings than she earned, so it was back to the Melbourne head office blacking factory for her, to toil for hours over spreadsheets, wear her fingers to the bone writing memos and keeping a careful watch on the corporate kitchen in case any left over sandwiches from meetings appeared, as they often did.

“On the way back to LA to catch my flight back to Melbourne, I checked out San Francisco – because I think when I move back to the States again, it will be to the West Coast. Ah San Francisco – the Golden Gate bridge, Haight Ashbury, porn film studios in former military buildings, hilly streets thick with painted ladies, hipsters, Burners and the homeless. But Foley, it was not for me. I think my next adopted home in the land of stars of stripes will be LA. You know, the city of celluloid dreams.”

At this Skeltys glanced significantly at Foley, who, to her annoyance, was pointing her head decidedly downwards and tippy tapping away at her iPhone.

“Are you paying attention, Foley?”

“Oh yes!” Foley looked up, and at the same moment, so did Nico whose head promptly met the underneath of the coffee table with a WHUMP.

“That was a capital story, simply marvelous!” exclaimed Foley. “Now what say I put the kettle on so we can all have a nice cup of cocoa and some buttered toast? I think the Tour de France will be on any minute now.”

And so the foursome settled back into their comfy chairs and got ready to spend the rest of the evening watching men with cricket-like bodies pedal and pedal and pedal around Alpine passes, each scene more voluptuously European than the next.

But after some hours, Skeltys got a far-away look in her eyes, and she started to hear in her mind – faintly at first, but growing louder and louder, heavenly music. Plinky pluck, plinky pluck. Surely she was hearing the happiest sound in the world, as the sun’s first rays began to poke their little pinkies out from behind suburban bungalows. Then Skeltys realised what it was – the Banjo Picker at the Gates of Dawn, claw-hammering new Band of Discovery melodies, riffs, lyrics, whole magical songs even, never before heard by upside down ears! Skeltys jumped up and raced off to her bedroom to scribble down the intoxicating rhythms and rhymes. There would be more than two songs to play at Foley’s splendid soiree! Indeed, there would be lashings and lashings of them, so many in fact there might one day be a Band of Discovery album which all their chums could download and sing along to for the rest of their full, happy lives.

As we start to jet down the runway of a new year, I feel the need to press my nose against the economy class window and fix the past year in my stare as it starts to roll away. Although I know 2010 can’t see me anymore, I nevertheless find myself mouthing at it:

“I never want to see you again.”

Now I am clicking my seatbelt, leaning back and trusting that lift off into 2011 will be smooth. And I am hoping that after we level off, I won’t have to stare for too long up the aisle, anxiously waiting for an air attendant to push the bar trolley in my direction.

Late last year, my counsellor, indispensable spiritual guide and much loved friend, Michelle, urged me to perform a ritual of some kind to cast off the dark energy of 2010. Dear reader, this blog is it. I’ll keep it brief and relatively free of animal sacrifice.

2010: The dark bits

Here is a chronology of the dark bits doled out by a year that, if it were a human, would by now be serving a lengthy prison sentence for aggravated assault and not even its mother, who had always believed in it, would visit it.

January: Second visit to emergency department for acute pelvic pain.
February: Major surgery to remove endometrioma and ovary.
March: Acute pain continues, surgery outcomes still uncertain.
April: Pain abates to point of enabling return from Australia to US.
May: Post-traumatic stress symptoms, dread, inability to concentrate or sleep.
June: Black hole. Mostly bed-ridden. Anti-depressants prescribed resulting in adverse reaction. Seriously consider return to Australia.
July: Blood and other tests reveal severe adrenal depletion and hormonal imbalance. Commence medical treatment.
August: Constant brain fog, fatigue, panic. Supplement meds with nightly reruns of British TV comedy DVDs.
September: Limited functioning, but starting to improve. Able to leave house for Squonk Opera conference work.
October: Persistent fatigue, anxiety and insomnia but more functional days. Well enough to undertake music road trip for short film.
November: Days of concentration and equilibrium finally start to outnumber lost days. Plan trip to London.
December: Visit friends in London for Christmas. Struck by flu. Spend days lying on couch watching BBC and Channel 4 comedy.

So that is why there is no Jilted Brides travel/memoir book because I am afraid I have lost a huge part of this year. A voice inside me says I should really have tweezered all of this up and placed it gently in the glad wrap of a ‘triumph over adversity’ story before I exposed it to the world. Presented all this as an opportunity to deepen self-portraiture and silhouette my life-narratives against the throbbing sun of newfound spiritual wisdom. But I didn’t.

Instead I am guilty of imagining my readers in exactly the same way described by Nathaniel Hawthorn in his introduction to The Scarlet Letter:

“Some authors…indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy: as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer’s own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it.”

2010: The decent bits

I got to spend a large part of the year in my pajamas.

I had a great time on my way back to Pittsburgh from Melbourne when I stopped briefly in LA. I hung out with bleep buddy DJ Dougee Dimensional, and I met Lisa Coleman of Wendy and Lisa fame (whose remix I have still to complete).

I finally got to go on long planned music road trip through the Appalachians with the caring and uplifting companionship of former bandmate Lucy (who was also slogging it very hard down the heartache highway after losing her mother only a few months earlier). We got to Moogfest and I met Michelle Moog-Koussa, daughter of my hero Bob Moog.

With my one intermittently functioning neuron, I taught myself Final Cut Pro and edited two clips.

I had a great time in London, including hanging out with fabulous old buddies Bronnie, Steven and Sarah, with whom I shot a short forthcoming blockbuster The No 19. Bus to Battersea.

I fell in love with BBC and ITV/Thames TV comedy all over again. I am not exaggerating when I say that watching hundreds of hours of The Mighty Boosh, The Goodies, Are You Being Served, not to mention Morcambe and Wise and The Two Ronnies’ Christmas specials, to name just some highlights, was a major part of my healing process.

Already 2011 is shaping up to be a kinder year. I am heading back to Australia in the first week of February to take up a short term contract in my home town of Melbourne. I’ll be working for the Victorian Department of Health on ambulance funding policy. I’m grateful for the opportunity for some full-time, well paid work after a threadbare 2010, and also to see some wonderful old work colleagues again. Then I will be back in the USA next summer for a renewed hunt for creative adventures – hopefully this time with the body following where the spirit yearns to go.

But before I leave, I’m performing a second ritual to kick out the jams. Tanya, Scott and myself, along with some new friends Brian and Brandon, will be holding a cocktail/ disco party celebrating Pittsburgh’s Nouveau Riche. Think fur and bling or think nothing at all. All I can say is that, having bought a disco ball and lights and set them up in my studio/basement a couple of days ago, every sanatorium should have one. Few things spurt wellbeing as instantly as a spinning disco ball.

So if anyone is in the ‘Burgh on Saturday 5 Feb and you want to hang out with the beautiful people, then we’d love to see you. Invite attached:-)

Happy new year everyone! And sincere thanks for helping me complete the circle of my existence by reading this blog.